One lifetime, nine lifetimes are not long enough for the task of blocking every cranny through which calamity may enter. . . .  [A] life spent, however victoriously, in securing the necessaries of life is no more than an elaborate furnishing and decoration of apartments for the reception of a guest who is never to come.  Our business here is not to live, but to live happily.

—A. E. Housman, 1892

The painter Balthus once said that he never wanted to be an “artist,” adding, “I have a horror of the word. . . .  What I believe is that the people who paint today are not the same people who painted let’s say 200 years ago, or 300 years ago. . . . They’re all artists today.  What I find terrible is that need of expressing oneself.  Why express oneself, why not express the universe?”

We, Alan and Anna, carry an instinctual abhorrence for needless self-revelation and shelves filled with self-help.  But once in a while, a bit of sociological awareness is called for.  Most people believe they have a fair vantage of the universe Balthus speaks of, a fair idea of what’s possible and what pigeonholes most people fall within. But enlightened people once believed in the basic savage nature of the African, the emotional hysteria of women unsuited for the vote, and the pathological illness of the homosexual.  We simply wish to inform others of our modest niche of this universe, where a man and a woman who are deeply in love can welcome another woman into their bed and into their hearts without doing a single bit of damage to their love.  When we express our love, we express our part in this universe.

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